Why ARE Dressage Arenas Lettered the Way They Are?
After riding 500 20m circles in rapid succession, who
can remember the alphabet?
The letters are consecutive and in alphabetical order,
in a now extinct language spoken only by early 18th
century Hanoverian carriage horses.
The very first dressage arena was designed by the
lowest-bid contractor.
The letters were originally laid out by beleaguered
riding pupils to facilitate pranks on their instructors,
in which the pupils would pretend to be schooling
various movements and figures while actually spelling
out slanderous curses, in German, against their cruel
and heartless instructors, their diabolical horses, and
whatever silly person invented this dressage thing in
the first place.
The letters are actually advertising billboards paid for
by Sesame Street (This piaffe-passage transition was
brought to you by the letter G!)
Well, the letters are supposed to be in alphabetical
order, but somebody's Trakehner keeps getting out at
night and rearranging them.
The other letters in the alphabet are there all right,
they're just invisible--what do you think your horse has
been spooking at all these years?
What, you mean they're NOT in alphabetical order? Hey,
that would explain why nobody else seems to understand
how I've organized the office files.
